This is a very bad idea. Zombies transmit their virus by biting or scratching. The last thing you want to do is get close. On the other hand sometimes life puts you in weird situations. What if you're forced to retreat by a crowd of the walking dead and retreat into an empty room? Suddenly you realize that it isn't as empty as you think. There's one lone undead in there with you. He wants your brains, but what he's going to get is your fists. Welcome to a short guide for using martial arts on zombies. This article will cover a broad range of martial arts. I will be discussing them in two categories, with several subcategories in each main one. The first category will cover empty hand martial arts. These are styles of fighting where your only weapons are your body and your wits. The second category will discuss some of the more common weapon based martial arts. The weapons discussed cover a wide range, from swords and knives to staves and throwing stars.

Any discussion of martial arts must be done in generalities. Everywhere in the world people have needed to defend themselves without weapons at one time or another. They developed empty hand fighting systems as a response to this need. These fighting systems never stay static. They develop with the influences of new masters and the addition of new cultural influences. This process continues today. The ancient art of Jiujitsu, as an example, has evolved heavily in just the last couple hundred years. It mutated into the form of Judo in the lat 1800s and then changed again into Brazilian Jiujitsu or BJJ in the 1900s.

The creation of a zombie horde will just be the newest influence on martial arts. Even as karate was created to give Okinawan peasants a means to resist their feudal lords, I will now examine some of the current styles of martial arts in an effort to give people a tool to fight the undead with their bare hands. I will examine three subcategories of fighting, and generally place martial arts school into each category. Some schools fall on the line somewhere in between but I have done the best I can to place them properly.

Remember: Going hand to hand is your very last choice when it comes to dueling with the undead. Only use these arts for combat if you cannot retreat and have no usable weapons. Mankind invented weapons for a reason - they're really good at killin' stuff.

We all know the rules - The only way to dispatch a zombie is to break the neck or destroy the brain. Striking martial arts excel in this category. Striking, in this context, refers to martial arts that focus on standing apart from your opponent, trading blows. Some of these arts are better than others for the purposes of zombie dispatching.

Tae Kwon Do has come under some fire by the martial arts community lately. It is seen by some as being too big and showy to be effective as a self defense skill. The art focuses on strong kicks, and often its students are capable of some amazingly flashy high kicks. However, these kicks might lack effectiveness to a human opponent because of their large-scale nature. The bigger the move is, the easier it is for other people to block it. Fortunately, zombies are not well known for their blocking ability. A strong spinning axe kick could do real damage to the skull of an undead.

The same could be said of almost all of the other arts listed in this category. They all have giant kicks that are the best means of dispatching zombies. Capoeira especially has some very acrobatic moves in its repertoire. Savate is a good choice as well. Traditional Savate practitioners excel in this area as well. They wear a specialized kind of shoe with spikes in it that is designed to let them fire off tremendously powerful but unbalanced kicks.

A kick is a good thing because it keeps their deadly maws away from your precious brains. Be sure to wear good shoes. You don't want to end up bitten when you put your foot all the way through a zombie's head. Remember, even if you can kick straight from the teeth to the brain stem they might still bite your ankle. I suggest steel-toed boots. A strong kick can also shatter an arm or a leg, rendering the zombie less dangerous, if not out of the game altogether.

However, one of these martial arts is not like the others. Boxing suffers a huge drop in usefulness when you go from human to undead opponents. Humans suffer pain and they can be knocked unconscious. Boxing is great at causing both of those. Zombies experience neither. No matter how many powerful rights you lay along an undead's jaw they will just keep coming. Boxing is not the answer here.

The striking arts tend to be offensive in their purpose. They lunge towards their opponent, seeking to damage them through raw power. The internal martial arts are different. They seek to harness internal energy and use that to reroute the energy of the opponents. As a general rule these martial arts have a strong focus on the concept of internal chi, or a person's energy.

There is little striking in these systems. Instead of punching an internal martial artist would route the momentum of an opponents punch around them, and strike only when their opponent was vulnerable. Often women use these arts as a means of self-defense. The problem is that they are almost useless against the walking dead.

Zombies do not strike. They grasp and bite. There is little momentum to reroute and often nowhere to go. The only defense is the power to crush a skull. This limits the application of the internal arts.

They do shine in one place - breaking holds. As self defense arts there is a strong focus on being able to free one's self from an opponent. Here internal arts are often better than striking arts. After all, your first goal as an unarmed fighter against zombies is to get away. To do that you must break their clammy grasp upon your extremities.

Aikido is very good at breaking and reversing holds. You may even be able to break a zombie wrist now and then, rendering them unable to grasp anyone. The training in breaking a hold should be standard for anyone who may be going up against the undead, no matter how well armed they are.

Grappling is a catch all for a variety of arts that all involve little striking and focus on close contact wrestling with an opponent, both on the ground and standing. The goal is to incapacitate your opponent either through choking them unconscious or by breaking one (or more) joint(s). This is going to be a short section.

But Grifter, you ask, why should this be a short section? Jiu-Jitsu is awesome, people dominate with it in MMA competitions! That's great for you, but the problem here is that we aren't dealing with sweaty overdeveloped underdressed men. We've got zombies. The biggest danger from the undead is always the risk of a bite. All grappling martial arts expect you to get very close to your opponent in order to throw them, choke them, use a joint lock, whatever. Regardless they expect you to get close.

That is the worst thing you could do. The immediate result would be a deadly bite. Don't attempt to use these arts on the walking dead. It will not work out. Like the internal arts they have a saving grace in the way they give you knowledge of how to break your opponent's grip. Otherwise stay away.

Zombies are best taken out from a long distance. Given no other choices striking arts are clearly the way to go because they maximize damage and distance in one stroke. Does this mean the other arts are useless? Not necessarily.

Martial arts serve more purposes than simply as self-defense tools. They build fitness and provide entertainment as well. Few things will make you stronger than wrestling with other people. You work every muscle while staying in a relatively safe environment. Sport has been a source of entertainment for man for countless centuries, I think it will continue to do so after the zombie apocalypse. It may even increase in popularity. We will need high quality entertainment to keep our minds off the deathly moans emanating from outside our makeshift protective structures.